In an optical recording apparatus using an optical recording medium, a disc is irradiated with laser light sent from an optical pickup so that a signal may be recorded on the disc. Further, power of the laser light is switched to read the signal recorded on the disc.
In such an optical recording apparatus, power of laser light is controlled to irradiate a disc with the laser light so that pits corresponding to a signal to be recorded may be formed in the disc. In this case, if the power of the laser light is not appropriate, a shape of the pits may be too large or too small, thus making it impossible to read the recorded signal correctly. Therefore, performed is so-called power calibration processing such that trial writing is performed utilizing, for example, a region on an innermost side or an outermost side of the disc and based on a result of this trial writing, the laser light power may be set optimally.
Note here that in the power calibration processing, a signal is recorded in a region on the innermost or outermost side with power of laser light altering and, based on a reproduced signal obtained by reproducing the recorded signal, optimal laser light power is determined. Therefore, this requires time for recording a signal, time for reproducing the recorded signal to determine laser light power, a movement time for moving an optical pickup between the innermost side and the outermost side, etc., and thus, it takes long time required for processing.
Therefore, if power calibration processing is performed to set laser light power to an optimal state when a removable disc is mounted to an optical recording apparatus, an operation to record a signal cannot be started until the power calibration processing is completed. If a buffer memory is provided to record a signal supplied during power calibration processing when it takes a long time to perform the power calibration processing, a large capacity buffer memory must be provided, thus increasing costs of a relevant optical recording apparatus.